Self-taught portrait painter Shoumatoff (1888-1980) captured more than 2000 sitters, including FDR, LBJ, Lady Bird Johnson, Rabindranath Tagore, Liberian president William Tubman and generations of Fricks, Mellons and DuPonts. Born in Russia, she moved to New York in 1917 with her husband Leo, then a representative of Alexander Kerensky's provisional government. The prosaic memoir, consisting mostly of Shoumatoff's informal, chatty impressions of the subjects she painted, intersperses reproductions of her art. The focus is on FDR;his second sitting for her, on April 12, 1945, was cut short by a seizure, and he died later that day of a cerebral hemorrhage. Her Unfinished Portrait hangs in the ``Little White House'' museum in Warm Springs, Ga. Shoumatoff's recollections of FDR's last hours will interest history buffs. (Apr.)
